


Spit the Blood Back (I'm Amazed That You're All Right)

by thelightninginme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 09:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18688327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelightninginme/pseuds/thelightninginme
Summary: Steve, Bucky, and the proper post-battle hug/reunion scene that we were so cruelly robbed off.





	Spit the Blood Back (I'm Amazed That You're All Right)

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Chelsea" by Phoebe Bridgers which is such a good Stucky song, guys, please go look it up and die like I did the first time I heard it.
> 
> There is a looooot I want to do with Endgame, but this seemed like a good place to start! Hit me up on tumblr at thelightninginme.

“Where’s Nat?” Sam asks of no one in particular. 

The only answer is Okoye’s downcast eyes and lips pressed in a firm line. Sam doesn’t say anything, just sits down heavily on a hunk of rubble. 

Bucky looks down at the gun still held loosely in his hands. “Do you want it back?” he had asked Natasha a little awkwardly, in Wakanda. 

“You shot me  _and_  you’re stealing my stuff?” she answered almost immediately, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. “No, you can keep borrowing it.” 

He props the weapon gently against the rubble and takes up vigil next to Sam, attempting to quash down the irrational, shameful surge of anger that Natasha has died before he could give it back to her. 

There seems to be little else to do now but sit there. Was this how it looked after the last battle, those left huddling up in knots like cavepeople around a campfire? “Go,” Sam says, grabbing hold of Bucky’s shoulder and giving him a little shove. “Just go, man. He needs you.” 

“No. Not yet,” Bucky says, but all the same he can’t take his eyes off Steve’s form, hunched with grief, amidst that knot of them that were a part of something good at a time when Bucky’s hands were still covered in blood, something good that Steve had torn apart for Bucky’s sake. 

He misses Shuri’s slim form among the remaining Avengers until she stands and leaves the group of them to their hurt and whatever comfort they can draw from each other. Wordlessly, she sits on Bucky’s other side, worn out. Practically the second Stark made the second snap Shuri was scattering through the battlefield, administering what kind of emergency first aid that she could.  “There wasn’t anything I could have done for him,” she says, apparently not speaking to anyone in particular. She says it like it’s a puzzle, and Bucky realizes it probably is for her. She fixes what needs fixing, be it things or people, but the cosmic price the stones demanded of Tony Stark was too much even for Shuri. Bucky just nods, and slings an arm across her shoulders. 

“How did it do?” she asks, just the slightest tremor in her voice, as she reaches up to pat the vibranium hand currently resting on her shoulder. 

“Perfect,” Bucky answers. 

Across the field of rubble, Steve stands like he can feel all one hundred of their years at once. Shuri doesn’t miss the way Bucky’s hand twitches against her shoulder. She reaches up to pat him on the back. “Go on,” she says. “Go take care of him for a change.” As if taking care of Steve was not Bucky’s sole reason for being decades before she was even born. 

Bucky hauls himself to his feet as stiffly as Steve. He should call his name, or something - but the feeling that he’s a witness to a scene not meant for him hasn’t left yet. 

Steve has removed his mask at some point and now he scrubs a hand over his face, which accomplishes nothing except to smear around the blood and the dirt. Then Steve’s gaze lands on Bucky ambling towards him, and fresh tears cut tracks through the grime on his face. 

The last residue of hesitation vanishes at once. Bucky practically sprints the last distance between them and catches Steve against him and holds him there, just as tightly as Steve holds him back. 

When Bucky clawed his way back out of the worst of his nightmares, in those early days, Steve would never dare wrap him up like this, but he would murmur vague words of comfort, probably knowing it was his voice that Bucky needed more than any generalized notion that he would be okay. But this is not then, and Steve doesn’t need any reminders of who he is or where he is or why he hurts so much, so Bucky doesn’t say anything. He just cups the back of Steve’s head against his shoulder and doesn’t give a single fuck who sees them like this. No, they’re going to stay like that until the end of time, as far as Bucky is concerned, or until Steve breaks away. Which he does, eventually and abruptly. “Let me look at you,” Steve chokes out, cupping Bucky’s cheek in one hand. His too-bright eyes widen at the sight of a face that he must have thought he would never see again. 

Five years. It makes Bucky’s stomach twist in knots. “We tried to get back on our own, but we just didn’t - Steve. I’m sorry about Tony. And Natasha. God, I’m so sorry.” 

Steve nods. “I’m tired,” he says, and there’s a barely perceptible tremor in his shoulders, and that’s all the warning Bucky gets before Steve is slumped against his chest, so they go down on their knees together. Bucky wonders if the universe is ever going to stop doing this to Steve, taking and taking until there’s nothing left for him to do but collapse in the dirt. 

And despite his intention not to fall into murmuring tired cliches of reassurance, Bucky does anyway. 

“You’re okay. We’re okay. Just rest.” 


End file.
